The 2016 National Breeders Championship Results

2016, marks the seventh year that the National Breeder’s Championship has been reporting results. The initial purpose of the championship was to give recognition to One Loft Race (OLR) breeders for performance by their birds across multiple One Loft Race Series.

The concept is easy; there are eight OLR’s races that have been selected. You may enter as many of those eight races as you desire. However, we only count your three best results, for the National Breeders Championship.

Now, you might be asking, “Why do you limit the number of OLR’s that a breeder can select from?” Well, the answer is easy. In order to make the competition affordable to those on a tight budget, we only require that they enter three race series. At the same time, we limit the maximum number of races to be considered, to eight, so that the big money guys cannot just buy the championships, by entering large numbers of birds across many races. As you are probably aware, the OLR universe is an industry for some in our sport. There are breeders who send out 80 – 100 birds a year to OLRs. Some might even send more; it is very hard to track.

After our second year of hosting the National Breeders Championship, we learned of an international organization (FCI) that was doing the same thing as we are attempting in the USA. They have been sponsoring OLRs since at least 2007 and possibly as early as 2003. For 2016, the FCI has 21 races that breeders may enter to compete in the FCI Championships. From these 21 races, they choose your four best results, to calculate their Championships.

Over the years, the FCI has sponsored races in Argentina, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, Canada, China and in almost every country in Europe. Though, I did not know about the FCI when we started the National Breeders Championship, it turns out that they structure their championships identically to how we figure the National Breeders Championship. Only we limit your choices to eight races and calculate your best three results.

This year, there were 640 breeders who clocked birds in the final race, of at least one, of the eight OLR’s participating in the National Breeders Championship. Of those 640 breeders, 50 breeders clocked birds, in at least three of the final races, for the National Breeders Championship competition.

Here is the list of the eight OLR’s race series for 2016. It will be the same list for 2017.

At the bottom is the “Top 16 Breeders List” for the 2016 National Breeders Championship:

Let’s take a look at the 2016 results. In 2015, we added a new column to the sheet called “#RC”, which stands for Number of Races Clocked. You need to clock in three races to qualify, but you will see from this column that some breeders had three, four, five, six or even seven races from which to select their three best results.

The below table, does not tell you how many birds a top breeder entered, but it does tell you how many races they clocked birds in, and that can give you some idea of how many birds they might have entered, across all races in the competition.

We also want to show appreciation for those breeders who show up on this list year after year. Baldwin & Tilson was 1st in 2013, 5th in 2014, 6th in 2015 and 6th again in 2016. APC Loft, that was 2nd in 2013, 3rd in 2014, 5th in 2015 and 2nd in 2016. Nanez Family Loft was 1st 2012, 2nd in 2015 and 7th in 2016 and Hi-Cal Connection ranked 8th in 2015 and 4th in 2016.

Best wishes to all in 2017, you can find more info on the National Breeders Championship at: www.thenational.us